Odds of Preventing 9/11

so, to attempt to answer the original question posted by the thread's originator, in my humble opinion, yes, a narrative can be composed that prevents 9/11 with a bare minimal amount of handwavium, merely a matter of the right document(s) falling in the right hands at the right time.

I think it could even be done by making Dick Cheney The Unexpected Hero!

as Orville_third very thoughtfully noted:

And, lest we forget, Cheney and Rumsfeld were in the Executive Branch when Samuel Byck nearly killed Nixon.


Let's twist fate a teeny bit, just so that an intel officer gets the exact several pieces of paper within the space of two hours, and that officer knows... Dick Cheney. "Hey boss," officer says in passing. "Take a look at this."

Cheney gives micro-nod concurrent with Cheney Half-Smirk.

Undetermined amount of time after, Cheney in very very dimly lit room, sits in chair, looks at papers. See him looking at papers for an uncomfortable amount of time. Maybe a minute or two.

Then it's flashing to a lightly blurred montage of images... it's a dream-sequence. We see images of Byck, the angry twisted fuck who killed innocent people with zero hesitation for the object of hijacking a 747 and flying it into the White House.

It turns out Dick Cheney had a few sleepless nights right after that, the same dream waking him up, jolting him up in bed, cringing in agony and grabbing his heart.

Slow pan of vintage image of Boeing 747, interspersed with flashes of Byck, with sound of jet engines starting up. From this to grainy footage of 747 flying overhead, a touch shakily perhaps.

Briefest flash of White House seen from above.

Flash of light, then black, then screams.

Cheney's forehead is almost covered in sweat.

We are behind him in a hallway, he is practically running.

Cut to conference room, filled with a couple high-ranking civilians and a half-dozen of the meanest-looking generals and colonels you have seen in a very long time if ever.

Moussaui is hauled in. Dim room, see him again through trick mirror, even though we know that torture is not effective, they're throwing all and the kitchen sink at this bastard's head. In-his-face confrontation, Moussaui laughs. Cut to REALLY FAT syringe being prepared. Who came with you? Who is with you? Who is doing this? Who is on your team? How many planes?

Cut to very violent scenes of rooms being burst into by men-in-black, familiar face --Atta!-- and other faces dragged out into brief daylight and into dark metal vans. We see another dim room, a man hurled into view.

The scene with Moussaui repeats with minor variations with the new detainee.

Then the screen splits, suspect #1 goes to bottom screen, Atta himself is hurled into room on top half of screen. The screen splits again, and again, and again. Sixteen squares. Who is with you. Who are you working with. How many teams. How many planes.

Cheney standing at back of room. Camera pulls back. Cheney, grim face, flanked by others in uniform in navy-blue suits. Pull back, presidential seal, the president is addressing the nation, and it is very very very very very serious.

Cheney looks to side, gives half smirk and micro-nod, faces back front.


Optional:

It's winter. Osama Bin Laden and a small entourage are gathered in close quarters. Bin Laden has an irritated expression on his face.

He doesn't know how good he has it.

Ooops. Did I say has? I meant had.

Fast-moving shapes, clad in dark fabric, half the folks in the room are reduced to shaking chunks, cut immediately to a long, long person being dragged out roughly with a black hood covering his face. A broken bleeding face with a mostly white beard --a medical doctor gone completely to waste-- photographed and covered with cloth.
 
Hmm

A TL where 9/11 failed but then the terrorists carry out a more devastating attack would be rather interesting.


They were allegedly pondering putting containers into NYC subways that would have released poison gas. If they had done that in a coordinated manner for a half dozen trains at rush hour, can you imagine? The horror! Underground, dark tunnels, trains careening with no one at the controls filled with dead New Yorkers, that scares me just writing it.
 
They were allegedly pondering putting containers into NYC subways that would have released poison gas. If they had done that in a coordinated manner for a half dozen trains at rush hour, can you imagine? The horror! Underground, dark tunnels, trains careening with no one at the controls filled with dead New Yorkers, that scares me just writing it.

And I thought the London bombings were bad :eek:
 
Diverge the timeline earlier than 2001?

I agree converging multiple teams, in country for many months and having to be trained here as well, and then executing a simultaneous attack has more reasons to fall apart, occur piecemeal with perhaps just 1-2 planes seized and flown successfully at best and with enough time lag like the DC attacks, the later planes downed by fighter interceptors. This'd be a very challenging mission for any government at any time, let alone a ragtag band.

However, the simplest timeline divergences would be:
1. Osama is killed in Afghanistan anytime during the Soviet invasion, high likelihood as a volunteer amateur. Assumes his organizational skills, charisma, personal network, wealth, engineering training etc. were critical to forming and leading an Al Quaida that accomplished what it did.
2. Osama killed by a Taliban leader in a turf/dominance battle or during an extortion for more Arabian protection money to hide him in Afghanistan since we'd been trying to kill him since the U.S.S. Cole attack at least. Criminals falling out on a deal, betraying each other, and killing each other is pretty common.
3. Soviets decide not to invade Afghanistan so the crucible to develop all of these factions and individuals doesn't occur. Afghanistan was an odd choice at an odd time, seems like a "let's do something else" would be an easy decision to happen.
4. Bin Laden's father ticks off the Saudi royals on one of the many construction projects and they fire him (if not behead him) and expel his family while seizing most of their wealth. Kings do this sort of thing to long time vendors throughout history and most regimes. That would have put Osama out of the country, out of the money, and focused if anything on revenge against the Saudi Royal Family or just working as a civil engineer in Egypt, Pakistan, etc. bitter about losing his childhood lifestyle.
 
There are hundreds of ways you can butterfly 9/11 away, of course you may just replace it with a 9/8, 10/1 or whatever, maybe just 3 planes etc etc.
Or you could get a longer delay, possible with changes in the plan.


The old jokes about the CIA stamping documents "SECRET - Especially to the FBI and DIA" (agencies can be switched at will) were unfortunately all too close to reality. There is a really big risc of any leads getting lost between agencies (or departments or...).

IIRC translations were running 3 weeks or so behind - for priority stuff !
And you had management playing games to increase the lag in order to boost funding.... And you can find countless other examples both within agencies and of course between them.

Come 9/11 suddenly you have unlimited manpower & overtime, an absolute priority, actual cooperation etc.
Not to mention some very solid leads like the identities of the hijackers, so it's really not that surprising that a picture was formed so quickly.
 
Yes. Have a president who isn't a bumbling incompetant and who therefore listens to his advisers and have a national security adviser with actual experience. Oh and a V-P who isn't constantly channelling Darth Vader.

Yes, because Cheney was the VPOTUS during the 1990s.
 
Hmm

A TL where 9/11 failed but then the terrorists carry out a more devastating attack would be rather interesting.

The rough idea that I have is actually this: 9/11 fails, but al Qaeda doesn't give up and alters their plans for a later strike. The trick, of course, is getting a realistic means to derail 9/11...
 
Pretty accurate assessment, I'd say. Except for one point - why would ANYTHING we did against Saddam be a problem for OBL?

Saddam and the Baath are the sworn enemies of OBL and the AQ.

That statement is about as nonsensical as saying "J. Edgar Hoover's actions against the Ku Klux Klan incited the Black Panthers to riot in several cities."

OBL was not so dumb as to think that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" - but he was usually smart enough to let his enemies fight and then take on the weakened survivor.

9/11 was a HUGE mistake in that regard. He should have left it alone and let the US take out Iraq and THEN made his move.

And - I agree with you - I think Gore would have been smart enough to make Iraq another North Korea...a pariah state. I used to hear that term bandied about in those days. "Build a wall around it" was another term.
Simple, Bin LAden was looking for reasons to support his attacks on the West. He hated Saddam, but Saddam was at at least a nominal Muslim. The US was occupying Saudi Arabia (the land of the Two Holy Mosques) to get at Saddam...and killing Iraquis with attacks and sanctions. (Besides, if Al-Quaida can defeat the US...Saddam will look like a weak horse in comparison.)
It should also be noted that a lot of the intel allegedly tying Iraq to al-Quaida came from torture...though some may have been wishful thinking...
 
Watch NG Surviving 9/11 and see how many chances USA had to prevent the attacks.

Military intelligence noticing the flight training, but elect not to inform FBI because that would breaching the law since the highjackers had valid VISAs

Clinton having OBL in his sights but not taking him out because not enough Americans knew who OBL was compared to Monica Lewinsky

The leader of the team on U93 beeing not quite so eager to do the attack as OBL would have liked(had it been a month later its quite possible he would change his mind)

and so on and on
 

stalkere

Banned
Watch NG Surviving 9/11 and see how many chances USA had to prevent the attacks.

Military intelligence noticing the flight training, but elect not to inform FBI because that would breaching the law since the highjackers had valid VISAs

Clinton having OBL in his sights but not taking him out because not enough Americans knew who OBL was compared to Monica Lewinsky

The leader of the team on U93 beeing not quite so eager to do the attack as OBL would have liked(had it been a month later its quite possible he would change his mind)

and so on and on

I have been wanting to catch it that show - although one of the critiques I've gotten is that they fall into the 'cherry-picking" fallacy - as other posters have noted - "Why didn't you see this"?

AFTER they pull the Needles out of the haystack.

And there is still a persistant oddball rumor that there were two more teams that were stopped without intervention -possibly a third one one. Two at Miami-Dade and one at Sea-Tac. Various stories, hard to track down. Almost in the tinfoil hat category - EXCEPT for the odd reactions I used to get when I asked about them, back when I had access. Yes, definitely in the tinfoil hat category, as far as you're concerned.

And just to comment - there was at least six more HARD, definitive threats, much more concrete than anything before 9/11, against American targets, between 2001 and 2003, when I retired....that never occurred.

Did they get stopped, or just ...what?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I would like to think so. It'd be bloody close.



Tom Clancy, The Book Where Japan Versus USA, a nationalistic Japan Air Lines pilot flies a fuel-loaded 747 into Capitol Hill.

I always wonder if OBL read the Tom Clancy novel to come up with the idea. Since the attacks were planned weeks in advanced, it would be very difficult to know where the President would be on that day. Things could have gone much worse on 9/11 too with something like.

09:15 The first lane hits the white house while Bush is having a security meeting with the VP, Joint Chiefs, Sec Defense, and National Security Advisor. All are instantly killed along with most of the White House employees.

09:16 Congress is in session and actually on the job working. A vote is going on when the second plan slams into Capitol Building near the House Chamber. A majority of representatives die, require elections to fill their position. The Speaker of the House also dies.

09:20 Marine One flies the President Pro Tempore out of D.C, while all USA forces go on max alert, including strategic assets.

A scenario like this is pretty close to Clancy's Novel, and OBL may have just been copying the book with minor changes such as 4 planes not 1, and also going for the WTC.

As to preventing the attacks, yes lower level agents might have caught them, but this is not the fault of the President of either party. A President of a nation of 300 million and with a combine military and security forces of 2 million can't personally supervise it all. Blaming Bush for not preventing 9/11 is like blaming Nimitz for the sinking of the USS Indianapolis or the PM of the UK for the sinking of the Titanic. A more appropriate level of blame are the agents who did not follow up, their supervisors, and to a lesser extent to the director of the FBI and CIA. But even the director of the FBI and CIA are not personally negligent, but instead, in retrospect, they should have focused more of their time on promoting inter agency co-operation.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Well, among other things, I'm pretty sure that the Gore administration would not have shelved the Hart-Rudman report on Airport and Airline security, many of whose recommendations would prevented 9/11. And many of which could and would have been implemented prior to 9/11.

The Clinton Administration had made terrorism a priority. The Gore Administration would almost certainly have continued to make terrorism a priority and allocated resources and attention accordingly. The Bush administration downgraded or eliminated that as a priority, took resources away from fighting terrorism.

I'm pretty sure that a President Gore would not have responded to "Osama Bin Laden intends to strike inside the United States" with 'You've covered your ass,' and continued his vacation.

I can go on for an hour.

But the bottom line is that a Gore administration would have approached the matter with diligence and competence. The Bush administration displayed a complete lack of interest, approached it with negligence and laziness.

Frankly, the notion that 9/11 is for-ordained is ASB. The bad guys had a long streak of luck going for them, and part of that luck was the Bush administration.

But we'll agree to disagree.

Please do go on:

Please list the security upgrade approved and funded by President Clinton that were cancelled by the Bush administration, especially by Bush personally. Only list security upgrades that would have actually stopped the attacked. Reports and commissions in DC don't mean a lot, they are a way to look like a problems is being handled, yet do nothing.

I am serious, i would be greatly enlightened if you can list actual actions taken by Clinton/Gore that Bush reversed. This i thought about doing it for 8 years, did nothing, but would have done something in year 9 is a junk argument. Unless you have something like Clinton got funding and authorization for 10K more airport security personnel, and then Bush refused to hire them, you don't have much of an argument.
 

mr noob

Banned
stop 9/11
didnt you watch family guy if 9/11 doesnt happen then bush starts the 2nd civil war and the world go to shit
 
Please do go on:

Thank you, but I will decline. I have the feeling that ten more examples or a hundred wouldn't change your mind, and that being the case, I don't see the point of wasting both our time.

Frankly, up to me, I'd rather post on the Moontrap Timeline, or Axis of Andes, or Green Antarctica, or the Land of Ice and Mice. I find writing on those threads much more enjoyable and the atmosphere more collegial.

I mean no disrespect, but if you'd like to continue on this thread, you may do so without me.
 
preventing 9/11 would have been a matter of pure serendipity

Proper cockpit security, had it been in place on all aircraft then, would have at least prevented the worst of the losses. It might have made the terrorists look elsewhere entirely for a plan altogether. The worst hijackers could have done if they couldn't get into the cockpits would have been to destroy the planes. Yes, that's tragic in its own right, but it's hundreds instead of thousands of lives, and far less material loss.
 
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